yesterday, down my road:
mentalist 1: “oh yeah I found loads of great dubplates in there”.
me: “huh?”
mentalist 1: “yeah Studio One, Prince Buster…”
me: [speechless]
mentalist 1: “yeah all that stuff like the Fun Boy 3. [mutters] it’s not my thing really. [continues muttering, stares into space].
me: oh right. I guess that’s the luck of the draw…
mentalist 2: “oh you don’t see many people buying those these days, oh yeah I’ve still got my dansette we used to get it out during parties y’know when family came round I had one aunt with blue hair and one with pink hair I’ve got two kids but I never see them I never go there it’s always raining”
me: where’s that?
mentalist 2: Blackpool. [shuffles records]
Nestling in the pile of sevens were a couple of Fun Boy 3 singles which I picked up. I was beginning to think that perhaps mentalist 1 was actually on to something, and that somebody else had unaccountably deposited some (no doubt hugely valuable) Studio One records in the shop since I had last been in there 2 days ago.
Such is life. Sometimes nothing, sometimes a Sizzla CD for a quid.
I bought the FB3 records and some others. It was a joy to hear “Our Lips are Sealed” again after so many years. Nobody really rates the Fun Boy 3, do they? I always thought they were ace – the logical continuation of “Ghost Town”‘s bleakness.
“OLAS” is produced by David Byrne and features a b-side in Urdu. Bang on! I never knew this before and was sorely tempted to post an mp3 of it.
But this morning I discover that my mate Merrick has, in a freaky example of synchronicity, already done this at his new mp3 blog, Dust On The Stylus.
Merrick is exactly the sort of person who should have an mp3 blog as he is fantastically enthusiastic, eclectic and random in his music tastes. A fellow charidee shop mentalist.
Also thrilling to discover that one of the many videos I used to see on that Max Headroom show is “Get Out of London” by Interferon – another tune in my head identified 20 years later…
jesus.. so many reactions. firstly, Fun Boy 3 are SO under-rated. I can’t listen to Tricky* without hearing FB3. The gallows humour bitter mania of some of that stuff – especially The More That I See (“does anybody know any jokes?” – is unbelievable.
and then.. and then.. Intaferon. Steamhammer Sam is the one. As I’ve commented on his blog, I’ve been searching for this for so long since seeing the video – with the sadfaced Sgt Major type from all those classic war movies in it – on Max Headroom. I still have the video. Used to work with the bloke who commissioned the vids for Max Headroom. A big Yo La Tengo fan. Between you and Merrick you’ve made me VERY happy.
(* these days i actually just can’t listen to Tricky).
Whoah! How utterly weird! Great minds grooving alike there. See if you can guess what my next download’s gonna be then…
Thanks a lot for the link to Green Galloway too. By extra coincidentalness, I found it the day after I came back from three days in Galloway (climbing their highest mountain, The Merrick, purely for the name). furthermore, the newest post there details a meeting with my friend Lucy! It’s all too much.